Brethren, I would have you know that the gospel which was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.
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One can be excused for thinking that the tenor of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is one of righteous indignation and the correction of its recipients. He begins by declaring himself an apostle called directly by Christ. Galatia is believed to have been the final settling place of Gallic mercenary tribes who made their way down through Macedonia in the third century BC and ultimately settled in central Turkey where, by the time of Christ, it had become an important and loyal province to the Roman Empire. Faith worship in Galatia and under the Roman Empire was generally free, provided there was no element of sedition involved in one’s religious practice. One can thus imagine a multilayered society, calling upon various gods and in which marketplace Christianity was the most recent faith striving to attain a foothold.
To make matters worse for the nascent Christian church it was now being attacked from within by those who insisted they had to be converted to Judaism before they could become Christians. These Judaisers were seeking to undermine the teaching of Paul. It is for this reason Paul begins his polemic by declaring himself to be astounded that those who had been called by the grace of Christ to his Gospel were now deserting him for a different and perverted gospel. His judgement upon those seeking to disrupt the church is stark: “if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.” Thus Paul writes with severity to these Galatians who were becoming fractured over the insistence of some that Jewish law become part of Christian dogma and that circumcision and the strict legalism of Jewish law was the only gateway to Christ.
Paul lays his groundwork in defence of the Christian gospel by posing the following proposition: if Jews by birth now know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, why would we insist that Gentiles come to Christ through the law. To illustrate the point he refers to Peter, called Cephas (the rock) by Christ and criticises him for his fear of the circumcision party which caused him to act with a lack of sincerity towards the truth of the gospel. He declares: “I said to Cephas before them all: “if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Let us say a few words about the apostle Paul. Pugnacious, polemic, determined, dogmatic, fearless and unswerving would be some of the adjectives appropriate to his person. He was not one to take a backward step. As Paul declares: his reputation in persecuting the church before his conversion was well known. Paul was a Pharisee who violently tried to destroy the Christian church, seeing it as a sect heretical to Pharisaic Judaism. He highlights the fact that he was advanced in Judaism beyond his years and was extremely zealous for the tradition of his fathers. There is no doubt that Paul knew the Torah, having been taught by Gamaliel, a great sage of that time, regarding the intricacies of the law.
So the question now arises: what was it that Paul believed in? True, he believed with all his heart and with all his mind and with all his strength that salvation was through Christ but how did that sit with his Judaic upbringing and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the Torah? This is an important question to answer because Paul was not merely one-dimensional. His approach to faith was nuanced and you need to come to an understanding of how he saw his relationship with Christ to better understand his teaching – and his teaching was the impetus for taking Christianity away from the heritage of Judaism and declaring it to all the world.
It is instructive to look at Acts of the Apostles to better understand Paul. In chapter 22, and towards the end stages of his ministry, Paul begins his defence of who he was and how he came to be converted to Christ. But it is in chapter 23 that we begin to get an understanding of Paul’s relationship with the Torah. Brought before Ananias the high priest, Paul was struck on the mouth at his command causing Paul to say to him “God shall strike you, you whitewashed wall!” When told he was addressing the high priest Paul declares, “I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest; for it is written, you shall not speak evil of the ruler of your people”. Paul then says in his address to the Sanhedrin: “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees.” It would therefore be reasonable to show that Paul remained constant in self-identifying as a Pharisee. Further, his reference to the “whitewashed wall” in speaking of the high priest is redolent of what Christ said about the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:27). Indeed, Christ himself was not against the teachings contained in the Scriptures. After all, does not Christ say to his disciples: “the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you but not what they do: for they preach, but do not practice.” So the real dispute with Paul is not the existence of the law per se but how it is applied by the religious leaders. For such strict legalism kills.
Thus Paul’s focus is the contrast between the legalism of Jewish law and the spirit freely given by Christ. It is the interpretation of the law that condemns one. So Paul begins by declaring to them that there is a right way and a wrong way to live in Christ. The wrong way is endeavouring to find Christ through the law. Paul says that you were not called by Christ to become slaves of the law but rather that you might be freed from the yoke of slavery under the law through true faith in the mercy of Christ. But this freedom requires careful harnessing. This freedom allows us to choose good or to choose evil. This freedom allows either full rein to the carnal desires which would hurl us into the abyss of passions and condemn us, or it allows us to be at one with Christ.
One of the things required in understanding the Christian spirit is time. As Paul says himself, he did not confer with flesh and blood nor did he go to Jerusalem to confirm with those that were apostles but rather, before this, he went into Arabia and returned to Damascus for three years. Time allows us to reflect. Reflection allows us to come to terms and to gain an understanding of what has befallen us. There is a deep truth to the proposition that one can only make sense of something after the event. We can only make sense of things once they are finalised – that is why when we look back on our lives, our true worth will be revealed only on our deathbed. Wisdom and reflection come with old-age and maturity. Christ himself was 30 or thereabouts when he began his public ministry. Put simply, there is no such thing as a child prodigy in religion.
So having established understanding through private prayer and reflection Paul becomes transformed into an instrument for spreading the word of Christ. Now, it is the Holy Spirit that leads Paul to establish Christ’s church. And it is this same Holy Spirit that guides us. And if the Holy Spirit fills our hearts then there is great benefit to us. Evil deeds come from us alone. They cannot come from God. On the other hand, good deeds require not only our own work but also God’s help and cooperation. That is why Paul refers to them as fruits of the Holy Spirit. Our duty, our responsibility and our obligation is to plant the seeds of these virtues. It is God’s power which brings them to fruition.
Without God nothing is possible but with God all things are possible.
